Alien cross-talk between cables reduces the operational bandwidth of a cabling channel because of an increased level of cross-talk noise decreasing the overall signal-to-noise ratio. Thus, with the recent deployment of high-speed networking, the measurement of alien cross-talk has become an important issue.
A powersum alien cross-talk measurement typically involves a “victim” cable having four (4) wire pairs being tested with n number of “disturber” cables, each having four (4) wire pairs. One specific approach is to test the “victim” cable with only one of the “disturber” cables at a time in the context of separately measuring powersum alien near end cross-talk (“PSANEXT”) and powersum alien far end cross-talk (“PSAFEXT”) for each wire pair. Drawbacks to this approach is it is extremely time consuming and error-prone.
Another specific approach is to enclose the ‘victim” cable with n number of “disturber” cables that are excited with white noise. Drawbacks to this approach is its complexity and power consumption with an inaccurate measurement.
Thus, a need exists to provide a solution for alien cross-talk testing in a complete, convenient, cost effective and expedient manner.